Rodeos are dangerous, for all the wrong reasons. Lasso – movie review

A group of elders and their two carers goes on a local rodeo attraction, where they soon realise the organisers are just bloodthirsty murderous cowboys on drugs. This is the super basic plot of Lasso – I didn’t summarise it, actually, since this is really all this horror flick has to offer.

Is the simplistic story a bad thing? Not necessarily. In fact, when I approached this movie it was only because I read on social media and message boards how gory it was, therefore I just joined in for some mindless entertainment, without expecting too much plot-wise.

To be completely clear and upfront, I had no intention on reviewing Lasso, since on my website I generally speak about films that are worth mentioning: popular and mainstream movies (that, obviously, help me with this business), horror films I’m genuinely anticipating, terrible flicks that I try to warn people about, pictures that – for whatever reason – compel me to express my opinion on them.

Why, then, am I here writing a review of Lasso? Well, because despite my relaxed and non-judgmental approach this flick makes no sense at all and there’s so much dumb stuff that I couldn’t avoid writing about it. To get it out of my chest, if you will.

Don’t get me wrong, though. This is not an awful horror movie. I was entertained throughout, some of the gore effects were incredible and a few scenes were, indeed, extremely graphic and merciless. However, Lasso is also very, very, very, very (repeat it 100 times in your head) stupid. I can’t give you an idea of that without spoiling most of the film, so from this point on my review will include spoilers.

[SPOILERS]

It goes without saying that the premise of Lasso is rather silly. Nonetheless, I’m of the opinion that you can make a good movie even if premise or concept aren’t great: Lasso, however, makes the premise even more nonsensical from the very beginning. The rodeo attraction is apparently very popular and yet they kill tons of visitors at the end of every performance. So, is that business model paying off? Do they keep getting tourists even though nobody ever comes back? The excuse of not having working phones – because Lasso also uses this trope – doesn’t convince here, because it’s not just a person of a small group of people to go missing: it’s dozens of visitors, every year, who go to this place and never come back. Are you telling me the police never looked into it?!

Talking about implausible moments in the film, there’s this character (played by Sean Patrick Flanery, the best actor in the movie) who’s a cowboy without an arm. However, he’s tough and ‘macho’, so he fights off the villains anyway, until his other arm gets chopped off (shoulder to fingers). Nonetheless, he doesn’t die of blood loss for some reason. Furthermore, he’s stabbed stubbed multiple times in his lungs and heart, and yet, towards the end of the movie, he stands up and fights again! Bear in mind, this movie takes itself seriously and doesn’t rely on supernatural elements, therefore everything we witness is supposed to be realistic: and yet, we have a bloodless and armless guy walking and fighting like it’s nothing!

Another scene shows one of the killers injecting his arm with some drug that makes him super strong. However, such little care was put in the film that he actually injects a part of the arm where there are no veins! Does this drug work through skin? Is it actually just placebo effect?

I should reiterate that I am fully aware of the fact this movie aims to offer some unadulterated mindless entertainment and obviously there’s nothing wrong with that: however, simply because Lasso doesn’t have any interesting depth or meaning to it, doesn’t mean it should allow the script to be lazy and seemingly written by a toddler. I don’t hate this movie, since it indeed had entertaining moments and worth praising aspects; however, one’s suspension of disbelief can only go to some extents, beyond that you end up – unintentionally – in the real of ridiculousness.